Pulseaudio

This page contains dedicated information about Pulseaudio. See Linux audio page for more general information (might also include some general info on Pulseaudio).

References

• Pulseaudio under the hood

Pulseaudio with systemd

On recent Ubuntu / Debian version, Pulseaudio is started by systemd.

• Unit file is at /etc/systemd/user/default.target.wants/pulseaudio.service.

This file starts pulseaudio in non-daemon mode.

• To get pulseaudio log, do something like journalctl | grep pulseaudio.

• To restart pulseaudio, simply kill it. For instance:

pulseaudio -k

✐	Configuring pulseaudio to log in a file does not work very well. Better use systemd journal.

How-To

PulseAudio in multi-user (relay)

The solution is to have all users have their own PulseAudio server, but all of these relay to one server (typically the one of current active user, see [1]).

For each potential active user, edit file ~/.pulse/default.pa:

.include /etc/pulse/default.pa

load-module module-native-protocol-tcp auth-ip-acl=127.0.0.1

For all users that needs to relay to active user, edit file ~/.pulse/client.conf:

default-server = 127.0.0.1

Active user might also need to run:

xhost +

PulseAudio in multi-user (system mode)

Main article: [2] (see also [3])

CAUTION — PulseAudio developers seriously recommend against this (see [4])

The solution here is to run pulseaudio as a system-wide daemon. For this:

• Enable system start. For 12.04, edit /etc/default/pulseaudio:

PULSEAUDIO_SYSTEM_START=1

For 12.10, edit /etc/init/pulseaudio.conf:

start on runlevel [2345]

• Edit /etc/pulse/daemon.conf — See man pulse-daemon.conf for more information.

daemonize = yes
local-server-type = system

• Edit /etc/pulse/client.conf (this is actually not really necessary

autospawn = no

We also need to add users to the pulse-access group.

sudo usermod -a -G pulse-access <username>

Troubleshooting

General

Troubleshooting PulseAudio:

paplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav           # Try to play using PulseAudio

Choppy sound in flash video

Reference askubuntu.

• Simply kill and restart pulseaudio:

pulseaudio -k
pusseaudio -D       # To restart it - not needed if pulse runs in daemon mode

Understanding / Troubleshooting PulseAudio

• Only active user has access to /dev/snd/* devices. Access is granted by ConsoleKit when user logs in [5]. Access control can be seen with

getfacl /dev/snd/*

• To restart PulseAudio [6]

pulseaudio --check && echo running       # Check if any pulseaudio is running
pulseaudio -k                            # ... if so, kill it
pulseaudio -D                            # and start it again (optional is auto-spawn is enabled)